Ms Geraldine Tallon:

I understand the point Deputy Deasy raises. I will answer him at a broad level and I will answer him at a more specific level if he just gives me a little bit of time in that regard. We would be extremely conscious that this is a time of very fundamental change as far as local government is concerned and a lot of that change is impacting on the finance departments of local authorities. We have a very active programme of local government reform. We have a very active programme in relation to Irish Water, and I have already mentioned the amount of work being done to extract assets and liabilities and the cost base for Irish Water. We have a very active programme of shared services development in the local government sector that is requiring very significant work by finance departments to extract costs for payroll, costs for HR, costs for all sorts of back-office functions, costs for functions that could be delivered regionally, etc. There is the added complexity in Waterford of work related to the merger between Waterford city and Waterford county. There is a variety of layers of process of significant change involved in the local government system.

We have been very conscious, and Ministers have been extremely conscious, of the pressures on business locally in the current economic climate and that has been part of the driver for efficiency gains and cost retrenchments within the local government sector. We are now in a situation where, under the efficiency programme we have had for a number of years, €830 million in verified savings have been identified in the local government system and that, obviously, has a bearing on the overall cost base and the level of pressure being placed externally on sectors. Some 9,000 staff have gone out of the local government system to help create that cost reduction. Rate levels have been contained. ARV increases have been contained and generally reduced over the past number of years and the strong advice and emphasis from the Department and from the Minister has been, "No rate increases in the system", in recent years.

Against that quite complex background, you have this independent exercise being undertaken by the Valuation Office, which does not come into my bailiwick and over which I have no particular control one way or the other, and there may be a discussion that needs to be had with the Valuation Office in terms of the approach there.